Monthly Archives: October 2017

As humans, we are hardwired to organize our thoughts through stories. Which makes storytelling a powerful business tool. Telling a good story can help you connect with your audience on an emotional level. It can make complex data easier to digest, and make your arguments more persuasive. So how do you tell great stories, particularly great business stories? Here is some advice from Kellogg faculty. Read more>>

Vijay Pande, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, discusses the future of AI and brain implants. Pande sits on the board of many startups including Apeel Sciences, Freenome, and Rigetti Computing. In an interview with Term Sheet, Pande discusses innovations in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and immunotherapy. We’re now seeing a big shift on quantum computing. The next steps are to figure out engineering advances. In other words, we’re asking questions about how we scale up chips, rather than how we build the fundamental devices themselves. Read more>>

Academic research is often full of ideas that can form the foundation of startups. Institutions like the University of Maryland, Baltimore and Johns Hopkins are putting considerable effort to help launch young companies that license that research in a way that can bring acclaim and dollars. These growing life sciences and medtech startup community needs researchers and executives. The next generation of entrepreneurs could have the skills of both. Read more>>

Boeing’s venture capital arm, Boeing HorizonX, says it has made a substantial investment in Near Earth Autonomy, a Pittsburgh-based startup that focuses on technologies for autonomous flight. Boeing and Near Earth also announced a partnership to explore future products and applications for emerging markets such as urban mobility. The move follows up on Boeing’s acquisition of a more established company in the realm of autonomous flight, Aurora Flight Sciences, and underscores the fact that the aerospace giant is turning more attention to robotic flying machines. Read more>>

Aaron Westbrook was born with only one hand. Several years ago, while a freshman at New Albany High School in Ohio, he tried out his first prosthetic. Now 18 year-old’s Westbrook decided to make his own, using the 3D printer in his school’s fab lab. To make the controling process more affordable for everyone, Westbrook launched Form5, a nonprofit that customizes mostly open-sourced artificial limb designs in an eco-friendly way. The organization (so far, the total staff is just Westbrook), officially received nonprofit status this fall. Read more>>

British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Group has invested in the Hyperloop One rapid-transit venture, which will soon be rebranded as Virgin Hyperloop One, the company announced today. The arrangement was described as a global strategic partnership rather than an acquisition. The Hyperloop concept was laid out in 2013 by Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla. The concept calls for the construction of low-pressure tube networks through which electric-powered pods could carry cargo and passengers at near-supersonic speeds. Theoretically, a Hyperloop trip from Seattle to Portland could take as little as 15 minutes.Read more>>

Polkadot is a project which has emerged from the Blockchain world, and was designed to do something increasingly important. In effect, Polkadot is the interchange and translator between multiple blockchains which creative people developing on the Ethereum blockchain have been looking for in order to build a wealth new projects and infrastructure. As companies develop their own side-chains, they needed, somehow, to link these projects to Ethereum’s public blockchain. The question was, how? This is where Polkadot comes in. Read more>>

Company founders would seem to be a natural fit for change management programs. They are persuaders and visionaries who perceive opportunities and seize them quickly. From airlines to autos, and from TVs to taxis, individual entrepreneurs have upended one industry after another. When channeled successfully, these attributes represent the lifeblood of entrepreneurship and market disruption. Unfortunately, when founders attempt to apply these skills to their own organizations, they usually aren’t as successful: It seems the industry disrupter’s virtues are the organizational change manager’s vices. Read more>>

The setting is X, the so-called moonshot factory at Alphabet, the parent company of Google. And the scene is not the beginning of some elaborate joke. X is perhaps the only enterprise on the planet where regular investigation into the absurd is not just permitted but encouraged, and even required. Each X idea adheres to a simple three-part formula. First, it must address a huge problem; second, it must propose a radical solution; third, it must employ a relatively feasible technology. In other words, any idea can be a moonshot—unless it’s frivolous, small-bore, or impossible. Read more>>

Dana Kanze started noticing something funny about eight years ago, when she was pitching her startup to venture capitalists. As cofounder of Moonit Labs, a New York-based mobile app development company, she felt VCs were asking her substantially different questions than her male cofounder. She was CEO, while he was president and COO. Now she’s also the lead author of a study published this summer in the Academy of Management Journal, “We Ask Men to Win and Women Not to Lose: Closing the Gender Gap in Startup Funding.” Read more>>